Non-Profit/Volunteer

Industry Overview

These organizations focus on a wide variety of causes, including everything from the Africa Fund, which promotes human rights, education, and people-to-people exchanges with African countries, to the National Breast Cancer Foundation. Many nonprofit interest groups are located in Washington, D.C., where they lobby government on behalf of their causes. Others have offices near state legislatures, where they lobby for the passage of legislation favorable to their causes.

Nonprofits derive their operating revenues from foundations, government grants, membership dues, and fees for services they provide. They typically attract people who are passionate about solving social problems; the big upside of working in this sector is that you can make a positive impact on behalf of your organization's cause; the downside is that most jobs in the nonprofit sector don't pay very well.

Nonprofits and charitable organizations are becoming much more entrepreneurial, learning lessons from the private sector about how to operate more efficiently and do more with less by adopting marketing techniques to enhance their fund-raising efforts, or even starting their own small businesses to help generate income to fund social programs.  InternZoo lists numerous positions in the non-profit sector.